


A Series of LOONA Vignettes

by loosenoodlepoodledoodle



Series: Adoration of LOONA [5]
Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: Gen, One Shot Collection, uncategorizable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:26:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 4,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22798543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loosenoodlepoodledoodle/pseuds/loosenoodlepoodledoodle
Summary: I wrote a short story (very short; most are less than a page) for each member of LOONA. I'm either responding to my own impressions of them, or possible (quite probably) teasing about some of them. I did this for...reasons.
Series: Adoration of LOONA [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672402
Kudos: 5





	1. 하슬의 이야기: 없음

**Author's Note:**

> There are no ships here, not this time. Okay, maybe there's a subtle ship hidden hither and thither, but that wasn't the main focus of this project. I wanted to write something based on the vibes I get from LOONA TV and info from rumors and profile sites. I forbade myself traditional shipping as part of the challenge. The result is probably lackluster, especially because I am not into some of the members and therefore inspiration was lacking. However, at least a few I like. I'll put an explanation in a note at the end of each chapter, to detail what I was getting at with each story.
> 
> Also, it was easiest to write them all in first person, so the narrative character is in the titles.

I wake up one morning and am struck by how quiet everything is. It’s peaceful, though, and if it weren’t for the daylight in my eyes I could drift back to sleep.

Then I start to feel hungry.

I get up and go to the kitchen. As I look for something to eat for breakfast, I stop. This is my parents’ home. Shouldn’t everyone else be awake? A quick search reveals that I am all alone. But there’s no sign of why this is true.

I get on my phone and call and text, but no one answers. I turn on the television, and am confused. Some channels are broadcasting a loss-of-signal placard, but others continue on as per usual. Meanwhile, it’s the news channels that are most worrisome. They’re all showing empty desks, like somebody turned the cameras on but the newscasters aren’t scheduled to arrive yet. Then it dawns on me; it’s all the live broadcast channels that are messed up. The ones that show old movies and reruns are the only ones that are working properly.

I eat and get dressed, then head out the door. There is no traffic in the street. Cars are parked neatly along the curb, or in their lots. I see no pedestrians, but no sign of a disaster, either. No sense of foreboding a la 부산행. Instead it’s just as though everyone else has vanished.

I walk around some more, then head into a subway station. I still have to pay at the turnstiles, but I could just hop over if I wanted to. I still cling to the hope that this is some kind of disaster drill.

Down on the platform, the trains are still running. I board one alone and move to the front car. There’s no driver; they must have automated this line recently. I ride all the way to 서을역, with only the train announcements for company.

I emerge onto the streets, and its when I’m walking north on 세종로 that I start to break down. Tears slide silently down my cheeks, and my breaths become gasps, but continue I must. I reach 경복궁 and there are no guards to greet me, no ghosts of history haunting the palace. At the throne room there is no one to stop me from vaulting the barrier and sitting in the high place myself, but I feel too much shame to do that, even now. Instead I continue north.

I see the Blue House in the distance. I go there, but the locks on the doors halt me. Nearby some cars are parked, part of the President’s motor pool. I see one is unlocked with the keys on the dash. I get in and start it up. The tank is full.

It’s still plenty light out when I reach 판문점. I arrive at the crossing and hesitate at the threshold. This is it. The moment of truth.

Slowly, the car moves forward. My head is in a daze, then suddenly I must stop. There’s no space for the car here, I picked the wrong place. I get out and walk the rest of the way, but I already know what won’t happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this one is about HaSeul's hiatus. I took the fact that it is very noticeable that she's not present in the current promotions for #, and I came up with the inverse: what if everyone else in the world disappeared, and she was the last one left? It toys with my feelings about her absence.


	2. 현진의 이야기: Soldier

I was feeling very earnest when I answered the question, and after the interview concluded I didn’t think much about it. But the Internet never forgets.

Some time later, I noticed a meme about me being passed among Orbits. Pictures of me, photoshopped into woodland camo, saying all these action movie quotes. It took me a while to figure out what they were referencing, but when I did, I watched the interview again. I couldn’t believe it when I was the only one who said I’d do something else with my life. All the other members were very serious sounding, especially the more reluctant ones. I was flabbergasted.

It must have really struck a nerve in me, because 희진 noticed something was wrong. “It was just another interview. Why’s this one thing got you so lost in thought?”

“I don’t know. It just does.”

So she decided to help me get to the heart of the matter.

“What appeals to you about being a soldier?”

“I like the excitement, the physical activity.”

“Excitement? But you’ll just be stuck training all day. You’ll never really go to war.”

My stomach reeled. A shadow passed over my face, one that she caught before I could hide it.

“Oh my God! You really _want_ to go to war? Why?”

I couldn’t answer her, even though she kept asking me questions.

“Aren’t you worried about getting killed? What about you shooting at people? Are you okay with that, too?”

She stopped, as she could see she was hurting me. Instead she tried a different tactic. She wanted to show me how terrible war was, and the futility of it all.

That’s how we ended up watching _1917_.

When the show was over, as we walked out of the theater, she asked me what I thought of it. For a moment I was speechless, and I could tell from the look on her face that she thought her plan had worked.

The disappointment that followed broke my heart.

“I loved it,” I said. “It was so beautiful. Even the ugly things were beautiful in their own way. And my heart never let up, not once.”

I don’t think she’ll ever forgive me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Form of Therapy interviewed LOONA a while back. The comments were pretty funny, and I had to write this story based on her answer. Also, I saw that movie right before I started writing this stuff, so there you go.


	3. 채원의 이야기: Dress-up

I keep having this dream. In the dream I’m walking around a house, like it’s a real-life doll house. I find a pale blue-and-white dress and put it on, but I always wake up before I can look at myself in the mirror.

Some weeks later, I’m out shopping with 혜주 and see the exact same dress. Same cut, same pattern, same pale blue-and-white. 혜주 can’t understand why I’m so bothered by it.

“It can’t really be the same dress. Besides, it doesn’t look that special to me. There are probably many similar-looking ones all over the world. Trust me, it’s a coincidence.”

Part of me knows she’s right, but then she didn’t have that dream, did she? I insist on trying it on and she waits for me by the changing rooms.

I hold my breath as I step in front of the mirror. I open my eyes, and nothing strange happens, although my opinion of the dress changes. Now it seems less of a “dollhouse” look and more like “Alice in Wonderland.”

I beckon 혜주 inside to see. She has a curious expression on her face when she says to me, “That look really suits you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is merely my reaction to GoWon's appearance. She strikes me as kind of doll-like, so I wrote something uncanny about that.


	4. 비비의 이야기: Free

I wake up one morning, and get out of bed. It’s a day like any other, and I’ve no reason yet to think otherwise. I hear the others stirring in the dorm, and soon I’m joining them in the kitchen for breakfast.

희진 is standing by the sink, trying to open a package of yogurt. She says something to me that I don’t catch, and I tell her, “Good morning,” in response. She whirls around with a bemused look on her face and giggles. Then she speaks, and I have no idea what she says.

“What’s going on?” I ask, my voice quavering. The room goes silent as everyone stares at me, looking worried. Then pretty much everyone takes a turn trying to communicate with me, but it’s like I’ve had a stroke that smothered all my Korean language skill. 예림 even writes me a message in 한글, but to no avail. I can still sound it out, it’s too easy to forget how to do that, but I have no idea what any of the words mean anymore. And no one else here speaks Cantonese.

하슬 takes my hand, puts her arm around me to comfort me. I’m shaking with tears, a shipwreck in a maelstrom. She leads me back to the bedrooms and we get dressed. She takes me to the hospital, and while we’re waiting to see the doctor we see a news story on television. Last night, some kind of energy pulse was detected coming from China, but that’s all I can gather without understanding what is being said. But 하슬 gasps as she listens.

She speaks to the doctor, and I’m surprised when the doctor mentions Hong Kong. I’m led into the back, part of my neck is anesthetized, and after a few minutes they remove some strange-looking chip from under my skin. The doctor has to use a translation app to explain. Apparently the CCP had secretly implanted them in potential dissidents abroad. The energy pulse triggered it, wiping my memory. I’m lucky; other victims have been put into vegetative states. As I struggle to come to grips with this insane reality, the doctor shows me the chip under a magnifying glass. Clearly visible is a certain logo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought Vivi's appearance in "So What" was ever-so-slightly reminiscent of the Free Hong Kong movement (she's from HK, too) and since I had no other good ideas I went with this wacky sci-fi shit. Yes, I am referencing Huawei, too.


	5. 희진의 이야기: Pigeon

It’s the middle of the night. My eyes open in the dark. I can see nothing, but something is wrong. Something’s in the room with me that shouldn’t be here.

Wings flap. I tense up. They’re not close, not yet, but soon they will be. The room’s not that big. My body is as a tightly wound string. My hands won’t pull the covers over my face. My lungs refuse to fill completely; they refuse to slow down their gasps. Tears stream down my cheeks, and my heart can’t stop hammering in my chest. It hurts so much.

One of them passes overhead. Its disgusting feather soils my forehead, torturing my nostrils with its stink. My jaw won’t unclench, so I must hold my breath. The pressure builds, the strain is so much, then it bursts. My voice is gone; in silence I weep, swatting away the feather and creatures both real and imagined. Trance-like, my hands pull back the drapes, intent on shooing the things away, then they go slack as my voice finally finds itself and screams.

The eaves outside the window are full of the little monsters.

A dizzy sensation overcomes me. My body falls backward out of bed, almost as if it is no longer a part of me. My hands clutch the back of my head. I cringe at the terrible sight that blinds my eyes, and barely save myself from injury when I hit the floor. Lights come on, and my vision swirls. Faces and voices appear, comforting and reassuring. There is no sign of the flying rats. They tell me it must have been a dream.

But what a strange dream for me to have…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am shamelessly teasing Heejin for her fear of pigeons. There was an episode of LOONA TV wherein she flew off the handle completely.


	6. 진솔의 이야기: The Escape

So this one time I’m walking down the hill from 선정릉역 when honest-to-God, some crazy motorcycle gang pulls up. I stop and stare, and one of these dudes starts gesturing over and over, getting angrier and angrier, and suddenly I realize, oh _snap_ , this dude’s tryin’ to kidnap me! Well, I’m not down for that, so I run up an alleyway, thinking maybe if I’m fast enough the company can protect me, when the bad guys cut me off! I’m thinking _how rude_ when that first dude tries to grab me. He’s leanin’ over a little, lookin’ kinda off-balance so I dodge him and then shove him full-force with both my hands. He looks so surprised, he falls right over! Before he or any of the others know what’s about to happen I steal his bike and take off.

They chase me down 설릉로 and I’m goin’ like, really fast, and I almost crash the bike ‘cause there’s this big dumb traffic jam on 테헤란로, but I don’t die so I ditch the bike and run down into the subway station. I’m at the turnstiles, fumblin’ with my phone when I hear this horrible sound. Those dudes must’ve hit a bunch of cars, some kind of brawl’s happening out there, like 강남’s elites are all taking on those working class thugs, getting’ their hands dirty. I think I’m in the clear so I’m about to take the 분당 Line up one stop when I freak out. Those dudes were waiting for me the whole time, right? Maybe there’s more of them up the hill, like that guy whose bike I stole. So instead I take the Green Line to 잠실, change trains and then I’ve got no idea where all I went, I was just hopping trains all around psyching myself out.

It’s after dark by the time I get back to 선정릉역, and nobody’s there. I get to Blockberry Creative and open the door, and everyone’s lookin’ all worried until they see me and then they look real happy and hug me and all that. Somebody asks me how’d I get away, so I tell ‘em I’ve been lost on the subway for like four hours and then they all get mad at me. 정은 asks, “Why didn’t you call the cops?” and I’m like, “Oh _snap_ , that would’ve been the smart thing to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JinSoul strikes me as ditzy and blase, so I wrote this silly tripe. Google Maps is very useful for stuff like this, by the way.


	7. 예림의 이야기: 어제 밤

It’s breakfast time, and my stomach’s growling. I’m in the kitchen looking for something to eat when 진솔 enters. She stops when she sees me, looking really confused. I ask her what’s up.

“Nothing. I just didn’t expect to see you up so early. Not after last night.”

“Oh?” I ask. “What happened?”

진솔 laughs. “No wonder you don’t remember. I wouldn’t either, and you looked like you were having such a good time, too.”

She says not another word, and I am left alone with my thoughts. I take my food into the living room and sit on the sofa. Before I can turn on the television, 정은 walks in and gasps at me in shock.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing,” she says, too quickly. Then she adds, “Just surprised to see you up already. And still in one piece. That was so brave of you last night, climbing that streetlamp all by yourself…”

“Huh?” I exclaim, and she retreats, snickering in an uncharacteristic fit of giggles. Maybe this is all just a prank on me.

I finish my meal without watching TV, then return to the kitchen with my dirty dishes. 현진 is there this time, and she gives me this doe-eyed look while she blushes.

“Let me guess,” I begin, “last night—”

“—was wonderful,” says 현진. She smiles at my reaction and extends her hands towards mine. I take them without thought for the consequences.

What on Earth did I do? Either it was something really good, or really, really bad. Maybe a bit of both. Right now, I can’t decide which one I’d rather it be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Choerry also strikes me as ditzy, but in a different way from JinSoul.


	8. 여진의 이야기: 막내

It’s late at night, and I had been nodding off, but I perk up immediately when I hear them fumbling with the door. I turn off the telly and leap to my feet, greeting them as they come in. They look happy and inebriated together.

“So,” I begin, “I know you guys are all probably really tired, but I was watching TV and I saw this cool dance move that I want to show you—”

“We are tired, goodnight 여진,” they all say. One by one they disappear into their rooms, until I’m left following the last of them around, bouncing up and down on my heels. She turns to me and laughs, squeezes my cheeks like I’m some kind of child, and says how gosh-darned cute I look. Then she’s gone, and I’m left all alone to wander back to the sofa, and stare at the blank television screen.

I sigh. Eventually I’ll be old enough to go out with them, but will it change anything? I’ll never gain on them in years. I’ll always still be the 막내.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is me feeling sympathetic to Yeojin for being the youngest.


	9. 정은의 이야기: Chill

The fog is thick. It’s dense enough to give itself a strange sort of shape, one that I can’t describe. The air is cold enough that my own breath adds itself to the amorphous mass.

I walk up the street, past faces of buildings that I can’t even see. I reach a cross street and stop. There’s someone else here. She must sense me, though, because she steps away from me as I get closer.

I enter a doorway nearby. It’s clearer in here at first, and I climb a staircase. But the lights go out, and I stumble blind until I reach another doorway, flooded in the wan light of day. My eyes adjust, and I escape.

There’s a playground here. Someone familiar to me sits by herself on a swing set, navel-gazing. She looks up as I walk past, but she can’t spot me through the fog.

I follow a dirt path through some trees. They get thicker as I go along, and the slope gets steeper and steeper. By the time I reach a clearing at the summit, I’m tired, through and through. But there’s no fog here, and indeed the sun is burning it off of the silent city below. As I feel its warmth spreading over my face, I hear someone behind me. I turn around and smile when I see who it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no real impression of Kim Lip, but her personality has been describe as "chic" and "tsundere," so I went with a metaphor.
> 
> *The first girl in the fog is HaSeul,the second is Yeojin. The final girl can be anybody, it's just supposed to represent Kim Lip finally warming up to someone they know.


	10. 지우의 이야기: Flight

I’m running through darkened halls with no real sense of direction. I encounter turns and junctions, but I continue straight forward as best I can. Still, I feel like the path is curving, no matter what I do.

Behind me is something I am desperate not to face. I can’t tell you what it looks like, and I can never know how close or how far it is from catching up to me. I just know I can never let it overtake me.

It is much to my surprise, then, when I get the feeling that I’m no longer running away from it, but towards it. How I managed to turn myself around is a mystery to me. Maybe I was right, and the path I’ve followed curved all the way into a circle.

I can’t go forward, but I don’t want to go back, either. So I take the next junction and fare no better. I keep making random turns to no avail. I feel it coming closer and closer, and now I am too tired to run. Hopefully it will miss me in the dark.

I shut my eyes and cower down on the floor. It’s maddening, the thing, feeling it nearby and being unable to do anything about it. I start to think I should try running again when I hear footsteps nearby. I can tell from the gait who it is, I know her so well. I open my eyes and feel relieved. It’s 수영, holding a candlestick and looking not scared at all. She kneels down in front of me and offers me a hand. She pulls me to my feet, and as I stand there wondering if I had imagined the thing following me, she says, “You’re not fooling anyone, 지우,” and I wake up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chuu's and Yves's stories are sort of similar. The "secret" is just a plot device (but I think we all know what it implies, wink wink).


	11. 수영의 이야기: Follow

I’m alone, running through a forest at night. I can’t see a path, but somehow I avoid stumbling through the brush or tripping over tree roots all the same. I don’t know how I got here, either.

Something is in here with me, and while another person might be too scared to do so, I decide to confront it directly. I can’t abide any other choice.

It seems I keep scaring it off, whatever it is. It’s never far, but I can’t catch up with it, and I never see it with my own eyes. But I have my suspicions about it.

After what seems like the whole night passes, I finally stop giving chase when I see a light in the distance. Someone’s made a very cozy looking campfire, and as I watch it flicker in the distance I suddenly realize how cold the forest has gotten. I forget about what I was doing and head over.

지우 is there, tending the fire. I’m surprised at first to see her, but then I am not. After all, why should I be the only one lost in these woods? I sit down next to her and we warm our hands together. A moment passes, then she asks me an odd question.

“If you have a secret, and pretty much everyone has figured it out already, then is it really even a secret anymore?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So basically I read about how Chuu and Yves met, and Chuu was the more shy one (though in more recent episodes of LOONA TV, I think perhaps their roles have reversed). So I wrote her running and Yves chasing.


	12. 혜주의 이야기: The Ultimate Game

I’m known for being good at PUBG, so it’s not too surprising when some guy gives me a gamer challenge.

“Okay,” he says, “I’d like to see how you do with a game you’ve never played before, that you know next to nothing about. All I’ll tell you is that it’s a team game.”

“Challenge accepted,” I say.

He sets the game up for me, and I’m all ready to go when he adds, “Oh by the way, you’re the only Korean on your team and everything is done in English. Including voice chat.”

My stomach lurches as he smirks.

I load into the game lobby no sweat. It’s a bunch of tents in a field. The other players are wearing dark blue outfits, and I just manage to figure out the shooting controls when the game starts for real.

Our team spawns next to a farm. One of the players has a sword, and another has what I think is a 미국 flag. One of them says something, then they run off. The whole team follows, and there are a lot more players here than I thought there would be. Dozens at least. We run through a strange field of corn, then stop and line up against an odd-looking wooden fence. A short distance from the other side is a dense, spooky-looking forest, unlike anything I’ve seen in PUBG. You could really disappear in there.

Everyone else is kneeling, but I don’t know the controls to do that. The guy with the sword comes up and says something to me, so I reply, “몰라요.” He bursts out laughing and is kind enough to give me some keyboard commands; those at least I can understand. We wait for a while, then all of a sudden there are gunshots and yelling, and I’m immediately killed.

I spawn back in next to the flag man. Things are moving quickly. Apparently the other team got sent packing, because we’re climbing over the fence and into the woods now. I’m the last one because I have to be told which keys to press. Before I do I think I see my character’s body slumped over to the side, with some others. It’s only for a moment but I’m disturbed at how realistic it looks. Blood spatters the corpses and stains the ground around them.

Inside the woods the forest is beautiful, nothing I would have expected in a game like this. Whoever made it must have a thing for aesthetics. We stop at a hollow between some large rocks. Everyone lines up again, crouching down in the hollow. The dude with the sword finds me again and tells me what to do. I stick a weird kind of knife blade on the end of my gun and wait with everyone else, watching for signs of movement. The pacing is completely different from PUBG, ranging from relaxing bordering on boredom all the way to sudden bouts of terror. I’d lighten up, but I’ve already been killed with nothing to show for it. I’d be taking heat for this if not for the fact that everyone else watching me seems to be confused by this game as well.

There’s an explosion nearby, then another. I don’t see anything, but everyone starts shooting and I do so as well. I go to take a second shot, as finally there’s a silhouette in my sights, but my character starts a long loading animation, as do my teammates. What kind of guns are we using, that only carry one bullet and load from the barrel?

I lose track of my target in the thick gun smoke. Another one appears, and I only glimpse him for a split second before he spears me with his gun-blade. My buddy with the sword takes a swing and avenges me, however.

I spawn back in, and we are running past the dead. We come out of the woods on the other side, where there’s a green field with a little white wooden church. People are shooting at us from the windows, so I take a knee by some bushes and nail some dude with a headshot. While I’m reloading I watch my teammates get mowed down as they charge across the open. But the other side can’t shoot fast, either, so my guys are able to overwhelm them with numbers. I don’t want to risk a teamkill so I get up after them. I step through the door into the church, and immediately do not want to play anymore.

There are audible gasps from everyone watching. Bodies are piled by the door, by the windows, among the pews. There’s blood everywhere, and it’s impossible to tell friend from foe. I stare down the guy who challenged me to play this “game”, and while he’s ashamed he also looks satisfied at my reaction.

Later I ask the others what that game was about. 하슬 is the one who explains it to me.

“It’s the 미국 남북 전쟁. From over 150 years ago.”

I stare at her, and all the further response I can muster is, “Oh.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gee, can you tell I like video games? Anyway, I saw Olivia Hye's face when she played PUBG for ISAC or whatever. It was both cutely and scarily intense. The game she plays is called War of Rights, a misnomer for a Civil War game if ever I heard one.
> 
> And I guess it ties in well with Hyunjin's story, too.


End file.
